K-On!

Genre(s): School, Slice of Life, Comedy, Music

Age-Appropriateness: 8+ (occasional mild language)

Platforms: Netflix, Hulu

Episodes: 41 (5 or so are OVA / extras, but most streaming services have them)

TheAwersome Rating: 8.3 / 10 (Heartwarming stress-free fun)

Premise: It’s her first year of high school, and Yui Hirasawa is in a dilemma about which club to join. After applying for the Light Music Club (thinking it meant playing simple instruments) she tries to back out once she realizes it’s a rock band and she has nothing to contribute. The club, however, faces disbandment for having too few members, so they try desperately to convince her to stay. After hearing them play a song, Yui’s passion is sparked and she joins. But will she be able to stay focused?

TheAwersome’s Thoughts: This is it guys. The quintessential Moe, Slice of Life, “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” anime. For better or worse. It’s really just a sitcom with hardly any stakes about friends hanging out, having tea and snacks, and playing in a band together. Despite not really having any plot, this was such a delightful treat to watch. You’ll fall in love with the characters pretty quickly and have a good time with just about every episode.

Kyoto Animation breathes their signature love into this piece, and you get those warm fuzzies and small details that make this a truly charming piece. Something I really connected with was the relationship the girls had with their faculty advisor. Maybe it’s a unique experience to have a strong connection/friendship with a teacher but it was so accurately and wonderfully portrayed here that it warmed my heart and made me miss my choir and theater teachers from high school.

TLDR: Another show great for de-stressing and having a stakes-free good time.

The name “K-On” refers to the shortened name for the Light Music Club (light meaning casual or easy listening) in Japanese. “Keiongaku” means popular “light” music, often shortened to “Keion” and then “bu” meaning club.

If you were wondering, yes, this is the major contributing factor for where our cat got her name. Yui Hirasawa’s general laziness, but extreme excitement and giddiness about food, coupled with singing all the time (and singing about food) were traits shared by our cat. That and their hair color matches. Bonus points for the name consideration go to SAO, where Yui kind of just shows up and adopts the main characters as her parents, which also happened with our cat just moving into our garage.

There is a movie, “K-On! The Movie” that will be reviewed next week.